Sarah O’Leary is a writer, coach, and holistic health enthusiast who had a few websites that she wanted to combine into one. After figuring out how she was going to do it, Sarah asked me to create a logo and a header image for her new website, Holistic Hot Sauce.

After reviewing her responses to the logo design questionnaire, I started sketching ideas.

Sarah liked the orange flower with petals that look sort of like flames. Once the concept was decided on, I began working on creating the flower digitally, starting with the petals.

Once I perfected the shape of the “flame” petal, I began creating the flower itself.

After finishing the flower I asked Sarah for her input on typefaces (fonts) for the text part of the logo.

After deciding on the typefaces, we discussed colors.

Then it was time to put it all together. We looked at several different configurations.

The final logo:

Creating a header happens pretty much the same way. You start with a rough concept…

…and try different options. Sarah sent me photos she’d taken at home and on vacations, and I made rough header concepts for most of them.

I felt the sunset images fit what she wanted to portray the best.

Some more concepts:

After much discussion, and many concepts, the final design was agreed on.

The final header design:

Here are the matching Twitter background and images for Facebook:

Throughout the design process Sarah was working on her new website design. Here is a rough concept I sent her with my design suggestions.